Friendly Fires

Today’s big announcement is that Friendly Fires will be headlining Lovebox Festival on Saturday 16th June. The band themselves have said of the festival: “We’re thrilled to be playing the main stage of Lovebox this year. Having risen through the ranks after playing a small tent there in 2007, we’re proud to again be part of a London summer institution.”

As well as Lovebox, the band can also announce a host of other summer festival dates in Europe, including Bestival on the Isle of Wight, SOS 4.8 Festival in Spain, Roskilde in Denmark, and Sziget in Hungary.

4th – 5th May SOS 4.8 Festival, Murcia, Spain [Tickets]
16th June Lovebox, London, UK [Tickets]
5th – 8th July Roskilde Festival, Roskilde, Denmark [Tickets]
6th – 13th Aug Sziget Festival, Budapest, Hungary [Tickets]
6th – 9th Sept Bestival, Isle of Wight, UK [Tickets]

Need a Friendly Fires fix for February? Well, even though they won’t be playing live as a until March for the Future Music Festival in Australia, Jack Savidge will be getting behind the decks to DJ at a few venues in the UK and Ireland over the next month. The last of these dates, at Plastic People in London, will be the first of Jack’s own night co-hosted with Edwin Congreave of Foals.

10th Feb Thompsons Garage, Belfast
18th Feb The Pavilion, Cork
24th Feb Plastic People, London

We will be heading out across Europe again this summer to play a host of festival dates and we can now tell you about the first couple of events we will be playing at. We have already announced via Facebook that we will be playing at Gurtenfestival in Switzerland, which takes place from 12th until 15th July, but we can now reveal we will be playing at Sonar Festival in Barcelona between 14th and 16th June. If you can’t make it to either of these, we will be performing plenty more shows across the continent and throughout the summer, so be sure to check back soon to find out more.

14-16 Jun Sonar Festival, Barcelona, Spain [Tickets]

12-15 Jul Gurtenfestival, Bern, Switzerland [Tickets]

read the headlines of Sweden’s redtops, as certain parts of the country have hit a newsworthy -35 degrees.

We’ve already started writing in the new year. For the past fortnight we have set up shop in an old theatre near the remote Swedish town of Alvsbacka (Latitude: 59° 43’ 0 N, Longitude: 13° 40’ 0 E, for all you GOS heads out there), between two vast lakes that have completely frozen over.

On arrival, 15 ft from the front door our van decided 7 tonnes of recording gear was all too much and rolled slowly into a ditch. After some futile struggling with snow chains and 3 twig limbed musicians pushing the back, we gave up and called the area handyman. He knew an 86 year old with a tractor who kindly offered to tow us out, once he’d finished his tea. God bless you, you beautiful gaffer of the night.

Most days are a steady -7 degrees, punctuated only by trips to the shed for more firewood and the occasional stint in the lakeside sauna (pants on, we are British after all). We share our lodgings with a pair of mice considerate enough to maintain a crumb free kitchen floor and keep the squeaking down to a minimum whilst we’re recording the melodeon.

We’ve got the best part of a song finished and few morsels for future development. We’re proud as new parents. Hopefully you’ll get to hear them in some form before long, when they’re good and ready mind.

For those of you wallowing in winter blues, a big hug from me to thee. Remember, it could be worse. Spare a thought for the poor Swedes whose only distraction from the intense climate is a handful of articles about how f ing cold it is.

FFx